Jack Douglass

John Patrick Douglass (born June 30, 1988), better known as jacksfilms, is an American YouTuber, videographer, and sketch comedian, best known for his series' Yesterday I Asked You and Your Grammar Sucks, in which he commentates on content sent by fans.

John Patrick Douglass was born in Columbia, Maryland, on June 30, 1988 to David Douglass and Donna Douglass, and is primarily of Irish ancestry.

He has two older sisters, Eileen and Kathleen.

During high school he started to develop a love for music, learning to play the French horn and the piano.

In May 2006, during his senior year of high school, he created short video sketches for a school assignment, leading him to decide to create films.

The next month, he started using YouTube and uploading videos.

After graduating from high school, Douglass attended American University, where he majored in film and minored in music theory.

Douglass launched his main YouTube channel jacksfilms on June 26, 2006.

He uploaded "The WTF Blanket (Snuggie Parody)" on January 22, 2009, which is his most-viewed video as of January 2024, amassing over 25.7 million views.

Many of Douglass' early videos were parodies, often about infomercials, and Apple or Samsung phones.

On June 20, 2011, Douglass began the series Your Grammar Sucks (YGS), mocking internet comments with excessive grammatical and spelling errors.

Your Grammar Sucks would ultimately be the catalyst that jumpstarted Douglass' popularity on YouTube, and on June 27, 2013, the jacksfilms channel reached 1 million subscribers; this sits at a combined 6.18 million across his YouTube channels as of January 2024.

In 2014, Douglass' channel jacksfilms was listed on NewMediaRockstars' list of the top 100 YouTube channels, ranked at #54.

Douglass created the Yesterday, I Asked You (YIAY) series in 2015, which involves him asking various questions to his audience and reading his favorite responses.

Throughout 2016 and 2017, Douglass released a series of phone commercial parodies, on the first-generation iPhone SE, Galaxy S8, and iPhone X.

These parodies received media attention from CNET and Kotaku.

Around 2017, less episodes were released under an inconsistent upload schedule, with plans to end the series due to repetitiveness.

On May 8, 2021, Douglass switched over to the blind format where his team picks posts for him to react.

On September 18, 2021, episode #145 was released and the series came to a halt.

After Douglass made videos poking fun at The Emoji Movie, he received a package from the film's marketing team on July 20, 2017, thanking him for being "the [No. 1] fan of The Emoji Movie".

They invited him to the world premiere on July 23, and sent Emoji Movie–related merchandise.

In 2018, Douglass married his long-time partner Erin.

On April 15, 2018, Douglass won the 2018 Shorty Award for YouTuber of the Year.

Douglass launched a Kickstarter campaign for YIAY: The Board Game on October 28, 2020, transforming the YIAY video formats into a board game which combined the Cards Against Humanity format with YIAY-themed questions.

On January 4, 2021, Douglass announced YIAY TIME: The Game Show, a new YouTube Originals show.

It premiered the next day on January 5, 2021, for free on Douglass's YouTube channel.

On May 17, 2022, Douglass and Galvanic Games released Be Funny Now!, a free-to-play online party game for iOS, Android, and Steam, where players compete to answer prompts in the funniest way possible.

On November 8, 2022, the game received a 2.0 update, which introduced a revamped voting system.

On April 24, 2021, Douglass reworked the series to a blind format, where his team picks the answers for him to react on camera.

This would be the format that he would use from then on.

Since 2022, Douglass has criticized YouTuber Alia "Lia" Shelesh, better known online as SSSniperWolf, over her reaction video content.

Douglass' criticisms stemmed from Shelesh's use of viral videos from TikTok without attribution.

Douglass also characterized her commentary as "extremely base-level" and not sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use.

Douglass had previously engaged in similar criticisms of reaction channels such as Jinx.

Douglass created the channel JJJacksfilms, and began uploading videos reacting to Shelesh's content.

In response, Shelesh made several social media posts accusing Douglass of sexism and content theft.

On October 14, 2023, Douglass accused Shelesh of stalking and doxing after she posted information about Douglass' residence online, including recording a video of herself outside of his home on Instagram.

About a week later, YouTube temporarily demonetized Shelesh's entire channel, writing on Twitter: "off-platform actions that put others’ personal safety at risk harm our community & the behavior on both sides isn't what we want on YT. Hoping everyone helps move this convo to a better place."

This response was widely criticized, both for how late the response was and for using "both sides" language, wording many have claimed is victim blaming.

In addition, many called for Shelesh to be de-platformed, saying demonetization, especially temporary, was not a sufficient response.